Teacher Mom

All of my previous jobs wound up with me as a trainer in some capacity. I truly enjoy teaching. I have for a very long time. My junior high History teacher let me teach a class one day because she knew that I wanted to be a teacher. I always thought that I would get my doctorate at some fancy school and then teach and publish. God obviously had different and better plans for me. Funny how that works! God even let me get accepted to graduate school at Franciscan University in Theology and then during the process find out that I was pregnant. He knew that I need a little kick sometimes, and that includes into the vocation He has for me.


When my husband and I were engaged we were discussing what I wanted to do as a career and I was complaining that I cannot seem to find my fit. In the Navy or as an Information Systems Trainer at a big hospital, even working on Capitol Hill at the Heritage Foundation in an internship that was supposed to launch me into politics, it just never felt right, and I was always bored. My husband asked me what my favorite things to do are and I said cook, garden, teach, write, take pictures, and help people. He said something that I will never forget, he said, "That sounds like a mom to me."


Well, as tends to be the case, he was right. Before we got married we had agreed that I would homeschool our children. We feel that a lot of public education is abysmal both culturally and educationally. We cannot afford the Catholic schools and quite frankly, a lot of them are not much better. Most of our Catholic friends in this area homeschool. That's the niche that we have found and God has blessed us with amazing friends. I have always been excited at the prospect of starting our school, but thought that it was a few years off. I thought in my naiveté, that I would be stuck at home just trying to keep my daughter away from electrical outlets and out of cabinets. Then, like a bolt of lightening, it hit me, my job is to teach her now. I get that great privilege. I am blessed to be able to explore the world with her. I get to see her wonder at the world day in and day out. To see her learn. To clap as she works to stand up herself. To teach her words, association, good and bad, right and wrong, affection and tenderness, safety and security, and the list goes on. I am a little slow on the uptake if you can't tell. You mean parenting is teaching?!

Let's face it, the first year of parenting is not glamorous. It is filled with long nights, spit up, messy diapers, delirium, and requires a general look of a deer in headlights. I think that most of us stumble into parenthood and gain our footing as time goes on. That is how my last year has been. It never occurred to me that one morning I would be sitting with my daughter teaching her how to drink a cup. Yep, that's what made me realize that I am a teacher. I made the rather human mistake of thinking that the initial phase of infancy would last forever. Some nights, it really did feel like it would never end.


So God really did answer my prayer and desire to teach. He just did it in His way and not mine. Even though I still struggle with the Siren call of the world telling me that a career is necessary to make the woman, I know deep within, that my true call is at home. I pray more and more as time goes on that Our Lady and Our Lord show me how to emulate them in my vocation. I am far from perfect and some days the idea of me ever being remotely as virtuous as Mary seems pretty slim, but isn't that point of vocations? They are a path not an overnight transformation. It is an extreme makeover, but the kind that takes a lifetime. Thank you, Lord, for vocations. Without mine I would be lost.